A special education legal resource discussing case law, news, practical advocacy advice, and developments in state and federal laws, statutes and regulations. Postings include insight and sometimes humor from Charles P. Fox, a Chicago, Illinois attorney who is also a parent of child with special needs, and other guest authors. Email: [email protected]

February 28, 2006

The National School Board's Association ("NSBA") has filed an amicus [friend of the court] brief [Download NSBA amicus brief.pdf
] suppporting the school district's contention that schools should not be required to pay expert's fees to parents who prevail in due process. This post is a followup to an earlier one discussing the underlying case.

February 27, 2006

A high priority item for successful advocacy in special education is to have a good quality data based evaluation from a private evaluator. Such evaluations are not required in every situation; typically,however, when a parent calls an attorney or advocate it is time to seek private evaluations. These evaluations can be from a doctor, therapist, consultant or psychologist, but they all must hit the mark to be of any real value. The following are my highlights of the criteria to evaluate the evaluators.

February 24, 2006

A new study from reseachers at Yale University Medical School suggest that eating less can have a profound effect on learning and memory. The premise of the study is that the stomach when full secretes a hormone known as gherlin that inhibits centers in the brain associated with learning and memory.

February 23, 2006

In December 2005, the Illinois legislature amended the School Code to allow students with special needs to participate in graduation ceremonies with their peers. This new law allows students who have IEPs to enjoy the "pomp and circumstance" of the graduation ceremony, even if the student is continuing to receive special education services post-graduation. The ARC of Illinois successfully lobbied for this law which is known as Brittany's law.

February 22, 2006

The harsh reality is that a large number of adults in prison are failed special education students. What schools frequently fail to recognize is that the stakes for students who receive special education runs the gamut from a meaningful life to a life behind bars. The following story puts a human face on the experience of one teacher working in a juvenile prison school in Georgia.

February 21, 2006

One of the single greatest factors in determining the direction of educational planning for children with special needs is their IQ. The profound tragedy for many children is that accurate and reliable testing for IQ is either not readily available or it is misapplied.

The testing focuses on what are the learning deficits--memory, processing, or "intelligence" in a variety of forms; goals, accommodations/modifications, and curriculum all should be designed in consideration of these factors. IQ testing also tends to set the bar of expectation and tracking. Is the child achieving to his or her "level" is an implicit and pervasive issue at IEP meetings. However, if the compass needle of the IQ testing points in the wrong direction the whole IEP proceeds down the wrong road.

February 20, 2006

Parents victimizing schools is the premise of this long winded article from the San Fransisco Chronicle. This article furthers the propaganda war against parents of children with special needs and fosters the notion that schools are being victimized. Among the many failings of this article, it fails to even mention the low standard of FAPE set out in Rowley. The article claims that "the law does not define appropriate--an omission that has lead to escalating disputes about what public schools must pay for." Ignorant of the law that the Supreme Court gave meaning to this term in Rowley over 30 years ago, and cases have been refining it ever since. The article misconstrues the power disparity between well funded schools with attorneys on their payroll, and parents who are forced to take significant risks to fight for their child's education, usually when all else fails. The article misses this essential point. The article even misstates the entitlement of IDEA being to the age of 22 when it ends at 21.

February 17, 2006

Preparing for your child’s IEP can be stressful enough, but the morning before your meeting, can drive you crazy. You talk to your friends, you talk to your family; worries and fears run through your mind. Some things are said, some are unsaid. Here are just a few of the many things wives say to their husbands before their child’s IEP meeting.

February 16, 2006

At first there was much hype and expectation the new special education regulations were on the fast track. It now appears according to one group that the U.S. Department of Education may take until next Fall or later to promulgate the new regulations.

The propaganda that school district's effectively convey in the media, in legislatures, and at hearings is that parents are somehow victimizing poor hapless school districts. To me it is like Goliath complaining about his back hurting because he has to bend over so far to smote his opponents. The advantage is on one side; it is real chutzpah to assert that parents are the ones doing the victimizing.

It is an amazing assertion that deserves to be called propaganda since it is a Big Lie ! Schools viciously fight parents sometimes over very small and obvious issues to "make a point" and to "set an example." The Deal case in Tennessee is a perfect illustration. [Download deal_case.pdf
]. The school district's attorney spent well over a million dollars in attorney's fees to oppose the parents' request for an aide for their child with autism, when the need for this service was obvious. The parents prevailed in that case after years of litigation. While such hard ball tactics may have a place in the private legal arena they are not appropriate in the "warm and fuzzy" settings of school that are supposed to be about the student's educational needs.